Axie Infinity’s monthly player count plummets to the lowest levels seen since November 2020!

After recording $4.26 billion in total non-fungible token (NFT) sales, Axie Infinity’s monthly player count has dropped to levels not seen since November 2020, a 26-month period. Despite the low player count, the project’s native token, AXS, has climbed 62% in the last 30 days.

AXS, Axie Infinity’s native token, climbs 62% despite continued decline in monthly player numbers

The non-fungible token-based online video game Axie Infinity once had millions of monthly players, with a peak of 2.78 million in January 2022, according to activeplayer.io. While January is not quite over, the last 30 days show an average of 432,001 players to date. In December 2022, there were 468,805 players, a low not seen in more than two years, since November 2020.

Axie maintained an average of two million monthly players for eight consecutive months between October 2021 and May 2022. After May, the average number of monthly players dropped to 958,044, 1,202,210 fewer players than the previous month. For the next four months, Axie’s monthly player count remained above 700,000, but in November 2022, it dropped to 556,058.

The last month of 2022 and the first month of 2023 also recorded catastrophic numbers. In terms of all-time NFT sales, the project developed by Vietnamese studio Sky Mavis recorded $4.26 billion in total NFT sales, more than major NFT markets such as Magic Eden, Looksrare, X2Y2, Rarible and Atomicmarket.

According to data from cryptoslam.io, sales on Axie’s Ronin channel have seen a 41% increase in the last 30 days compared to the previous month. Ronin sales over the past 30 days totaled $1,418,842, and Ronin is the ninth largest blockchain in terms of monthly sales this month. Axie Infinity’s native token, AXS performed well this month, gaining 62% over the past 30 days.

Two-week statistics show AXS is up 67%. On January 22, 2023, AXS was trading between $8.95 and $11.84, gaining 24% on Sunday afternoon. AXS is the 42nd largest market cap in crypto, with a valuation of about $1.31 billion.

Despite the recent rise, AXS is still down from its peak of $164 on November 6, 2021, and has lost 93% since then. Axie Infinity’s play-to-earn (P2E) numbers are significantly lower than some of the most played games today. For example, activeplayer.io shows that Overwatch 2’s monthly active player count was about 23 million in the last 30 days and 25 million in December 2022.

Call of Duty: Mobile Live Player had 58,502,111 monthly players in the last 30 days and 58,001,154 in the month of December 2022. In comparison, Axie Infinity’s player count represents only a small fraction of those games with very high monthly player counts. Specifically, Axie’s average monthly player count in December 2022 represents 0.81% of Call of Duty’s average monthly player count.